Suggestions for WPT next year- starting a list

[Easy E]

I'd like to get the ball rolling on a big list that I can send to the WPT for next season's shows.

I'm sure I'll have more ideas myself after the WPT Championship and the 2003 WSOP on ESPN in July, but here's what I have so far off of the top of my head:

Suggestions for next season (not all mine, but ones I remember that I liked):

Assuming 2 announcers, each should take a position/style and "stick" with it during the year. Debate hands based on your style, let the other announcer (with his/her style) offer alternate reasons/attack your reasoning.
Guest announcers, with different known styles, would be another way to do this. DEFINATELY have a woman as one of them!

Hand number is a must, clock would be nice. Short review of the action that occurs off-camera would be good, so we know how players got their current stacks. Show stacks more often.

Do your Poker Primer show before, or after, the first WPT next year. Play that show as often as necessary during 03-04, so that you can cut out the primers at the beginning of each tournament show.

A stringent review of the productions for errors, ill-advised comments and other problems, must be done before the shows are canned..... or I will send a swarm of killer locusts to the WPT studios.

For the puff pieces, make sure to give some info about the casino and location, as if you're a tour guide intro'ing potential clients (unless that would smack too much of unpaid advertising)

Try the following for tournament formats (or possibly, a non-tournament show?)
- Omaha and Omaha 8
- Stud and Stud 8 (stud, especially, should be familiar to many people from home games.... I assume)
- Pot-limit
- Mixed format games (HORSE, etc)

Feel free to add your comments- I'll consolidate and send them to the WPT site from the group in mid-July.

[Lottery Larry]

A show or tournament on the Atlantis Casino. Other casinos around the world would be interesting- Canada, Europe, Far East. A special pictorial show- "WPT Hosts Swimsuit Episode" would be something i would be interested in.

[AceHigh]

I think they should have ring girls, in skimpy outfits, carrying around big cards with the blind sizes and antes on them.

Maybe I watch too much boxing, lol.

[Kurn, son of Mogh]

3 in the booth, with a different guest pro each week to provide counterpoint to Sexton.

Oh, yeah, and my usual vote for Gabe Kaplan to replace VVP, the "Hollywood Home Game (fill in the blank)"

[ArchAngel71857]

I like the idea of a guest pro, perhaps the best pro who suffered the worst bad beat to be put out of the tournament. Or how about the guy who finishes 6th/8th from the final table.

I too would like a clock or a hand number.

We could take out the excitement in Mike Sexton's voice we WE GET TO SEE A FLOP!

-AA

[MaxPower]

At the beginning of each episode they should show the buy-in amount, the number of players who entered and the prize structure.

[cferejohn]

Well, personally I think they should stick to pot-limit and no limit tournaments, though I don't mind watching games other than hold'em. I thought that the party-poker million was easily the least interesting to watch. Just watching the best hand get to the river over and over again isn't very intersting. Watching Phil Ivey blast someone off of top-pair top-kicker with nothing, now that's interesting. I don't think a non-tournament show would be very good since it has no natural ending point and no single 'winner', which makes for a lousy sports braodcast.

I think they need to find a professional sports commentator who has some poker knowledge (some of them must) to be the 'play-by-play' guy and have Mike Sexton do 'color'. A competent professional sports broadcaster would realize the importance of at least summarizing what has been missed ("now we jump forward to hand 37. In the interceding 10 hands a pre-flop raise or re-raise has taken the pot, with chip leader Phil Ivey steadily increasing his big stack"). This obviously means kick Van Patten to the curb. I start broadcasting school in the spring, so expect my resume in a couple years. /forums/images/icons/smile.gif

On a related note, send Sexton to broadcasting school, or get him some one-on-one work with someone like Jon Miller or Bob Costas. He really needs to work on not saying the same things over and over. Perhaps he could swap them for poker lessons. He also needs to work on sounding less excited about routine plays (oh my god! someone bet out on the flop after a pre-flop raise when the flop didn't hit them?!). That way when something truly remarkable does happen (Gus Hansen makes a huge river bluff with nothing when a 3rd club calls), his excitement will be meaningful.

Admit we aren't seeing everything. I get the impression that the current producers of the show want to fool viewers into thinking they are seeing every hand (as the fact that they are missing many of them is never even mentioned), and frankly that's just silly.

Chip positions should be shown at the beginning of every shown hand, preferably in an overhead graphic that uses a graphics overlay to show everyone's name and number of chips, as well as the location of the button, the blinds, hand number, and time elapsed (actually blinds, hand number, and time elapsed could be kept almost constantly on screen in a corner display).

Guest commentators would be fun, but I would only want to have them in for a few hands. Broadcasting in a 3 man booth is tricky in the best of circumstances, and when you get someone inexperienced in there (especially someone with a stong personality, as some poker players have), it can be chaotic at best. See any baseball broadcast Reggie Jackson (and to a lesser extent, Jim Brown) has ever participated in for an example. If guest commentators are used, this is an even stronger reason to have a broadcasting professional running the thing.

[mike l.]

i think they should fire mike sexton and have just vvp doing the whole thing. they should fire the girl too and have him do her parts too, but in the clothes she wouldve worn.

[Timer]

If Shana Hiatt asks a busted out player one more time, "How do you feel?" I think I am going to go insane.

[Rick Nebiolo]

I don't have cable and WPT is taped for me. My 27" TV is lousy and small (by today's standards) and with this setup thought the display of bet and/or pot size was very hard to read. Last week I had a chance to watch WPT on my parents top of the line 35" TV with cable and it was still relatively hard to read. This could be improved.

Also, when a player makes a bet into a pot and another player is considering a call, I think the original pot size and current bet size should both be shown.

Finally, although I like seeing both player's hole cards, sometimes more drama and interest could be created if we get to see the action from one player's perspective.

~ Rick

[Jimbo]

Rick rather than changing a multi-million dollar TV production why don't you just buy a 65" Sony Widescreen? I did and I can see the cards just fine! /forums/images/icons/smile.gif

[Rick Nebiolo]

Jimbo,

I'm "living small" with no "bling bling" these days and the big TV isn't in my plans for a while. /forums/images/icons/grin.gif

~ Rick

[nails]

My only suggestion is to eliminate the "10:58 rule" -- have the hand that wins the tournament occur somewhere between 10 and 20 minutes (vary it for drama and suspense) before the scheduled end of the program, instead of in the last two minutes every damn time.

They could use the last 10-20 minutes to do some hand-by-hand analysis with one or two of the final table players. It would give a bit of insight into their thinking (assuming they're doing any), and it might be educational for those viewers who aren't regular or experienced players (and maybe even a few who are). They could feature a hand or two that wasn't shown previously in the broadcast, or a hand from before the final table (if they have footage).

Even if they choose to retain the 10:58 finish, maybe they could use the "Poker Corner" feature (or something similar) to allow a pro to illustrate or explain a particular strategy or point by analyzing an actual hand from the broadcast.

nails

BTW, in some sort of WPT Google search I was doing, I ended up at a Texas Longhorn football discussion group that had strayed off into a poker tangent. One of the posters said that Mike Sexton looked "disturbingly" like a white Colin Powell. LOL.

[marbles]

More limit tourneys (granted, there aren't as many to choose from as NL, but a guy can wish).

More coverage of non-final tables. Looks like they missed a golden opportunity when that super-table materialized at this week's event.

[Sarge85]

More Shana Hiatt - Less VVP

More info stats - ie, chip position, hand numbers, pot size, etc....

Someone mentioned the 10:58 rule...excellent point. Lets mix it up a bit so you won't know who really wins just because the show is running out of time. The orginal poster expressed it far better than I.

I like some of cut away seens to ealier in the tournament, not just the final table.

I'd like to see how these players play against the fish, not just the "good" players who make it to the final table.
It would be insightful to see how the players played before getting to the final table...when they made their moves and how....

A whole new type of show could follow a poker pro(s) through the tournament cycle for a year. Go to different tournaments and see how they win and loose, before getting to a final table.

[microlimitaddict]

The ideas about having a professional sports comentator in there are right on the money...however I am extremely biased in this regard.
I have broadcast minor-league and college sports for over 10 years (over 1,500 games in baseball, hockey, football and basketball) and would love to take on the challenge. Since I have zero contacts in the poker world or at the Travel Channel I am not exactly expecting a phone-call anytime in the near future. But the various comments about the show do seem to point out again that sports broadcasting is not as easy as one might think.


A smart play-by-play boadcaster could indeed pick the appropriate times to sound more excited and can heighten the drama with their inflections (rather than detreact from it). A poker play-by-play broadcaster need not be an expert on the game (not by any stretch saying that Sexton or Van Patten are).
Please note that many top play-by-play sports announcers such as Bob Costas, Vin Scully, Dick Enberg, Marv Albert and others never played nor coached the sport they broadcast. Many of those announcers broadcast more than one sport...because they have the ability to learn different games and make them interesting to a new viewer. To that end, I would feel comfortable broadcasting water polo or lacrosse (or some other sport I have never seen live previously) if given the opportunity because I am confident in my ability to translate the action to the audience (this would be after studying reams and reams of material on the given sport of course).

The idea that you have to have two experts in the booth is inaccurate. Place one ARTICULATE expert in there with one competent play-by-play announcer who can ask interesting questions and lead an intersting discussion.

I think you might be disappointed at the results of bringing in any random eliminated player (such as the 6th place finisher). Gabe Kaplan's "discussion" with Phil Hellmuth on ESPN's 2002 WSOP was pretty brutal I thought.
However, the WSOP did interview several of the players after they were eliminated...and I wouldn't mind seeing more of that on the WPT. Mike Sexton tries talking with the champions at the conclusion of the show but clearly is a little suspect at leading an interview. I think Shana Hiatt interviewed a couple of eliminated players as well but it didn't go particularly well.

The biggest gripe I have with Sexton's commentating (and to a lesser extent Van Patten's) are the constant references to how sick the player must be feeling. "You can just see how upset he is that Phil Ivey re-raied him there." "He's going to be having nightmares about that hand for 50 years."
Most of the time, it appears to me that the player realizes that he took a tough beat and it was his turn to exit. Or, in the cases when there is a hand in progress, it seems more likely that they are determining whether to call or re-raise...or how long they should stall. They don't look particularly ulcer-prone to me.
Does anyone really think Doyle Brunson will be shedding any tears over his bluff-gone-bad or that Phil Ivey really did feel sick to his stomach?
Lets portray this as an intellectual game with some emotion involved..but lets not overdo it folks. Sometimes they just make a lucky guess or play a hunch...this doesn't make it the most brilliant poker play ever. And sometimes a tough card at the river knocked them out a little faster then they deserved...this doesn't mean they had momentary thoughts of holding a gun to their head.

If I'm broadcasting a sports event with an intense player or coach or situation...I like to let the picutre do the talking and give the viewer some credit for having a clue.

Other ideas -
A clock or hand-count is crucial to give a clear idea how long they've been at the table. ESPN's WSOP 2002 show where they have frequent discussions of how long they've been sitting there really added to the drama. It is obvious that the WPT is trying to make it look like it's a 2-hour battle every time.
I would be very interested in better interviews with the players after they've been eliminated to get their thoughts. It would be really cool to let them know what the other player was holding when they folded their cards on a pivotal hand (hey, they're going to find out when they watch the show anyway) and get their reaction.

Positives - I like some of the player profiles for the most part...and the production is pretty slick and the set looks very good I think.
The show makes poker look extremely exciting and it is cleartly bringing more and more players into the game.
The music works extremely well with the show as well and gives it a terific modern and fresh feel.

The brief explanation of Hold-em at the beginning of each show doesn't bother me...because most people don't see every show. And the lower-right-corner definition graphics are a good touch to let the announcers continue on their thought process without having to explain what "on the button" means every time they come to it.
I still think they could do a better job of explaining blinds and increased limits and all-in without going too over the top with it.

Please remember, there's a very large percentage of the audience that doesn't even realize that it's "play-money" and that a bet of $400,000 really is $400,000. This is partly Sexton's fault...because of the excitement level of his voice when he says "Look...that's a $100,000 bet right there and he just got re-reaised for $300,000. You could buy a nice house with that kind of money Vince." Okay okay...so I didn't hear this exact quote...but I have heard several quotes similar to this. He needs to stik with language like "$400,000 in chips." to help steer the audience from getting too confused.
I had to explain to someone how all-in protection worked because they were under the assumption that Layne Flack could have lost to Jerry Buss at any time and that his chip lead really didn't mean anything.

Overall, I like the show a lot and really wouldn't mind too much if the format stayed exactly the same. However, if they are interested in adding anoter announcing dimension to the broadcast then I am more than ready.

[John Ho]

More Shiana and less Vince. Though Vince is beginning to grow on me as being funny.